Ellie Taylor takes Elliementary on tour

Snog Marry Avoid host talks stand-up and sausage fests

Making the move from telly presenter to bona fide stand-up comic is not always the smoothest of transitions. Yet while Ellie Taylor may still be best known as the host of such shows as Snog Marry Avoid? and was a team captain in ITV2’s Fake Reaction, her reputation as a rising star in the live comedy game is positively blooming.

Taylor’s nabbed semi-final spots in the Amused Moose and Funny Women competitions and scooped the first prize in Company Magazine’s search for something they liked to call LadyHaha. And her Edinburgh Fringe poster for debut hour Elliementary (the show she’s now taking on tour) came third last year in a brand new competition for such things.

While all this adulation must be a lovely thing, Taylor is keen to point out that it’s not all glitz and glamour in the stand-up world. ‘It is a lonely job, though, as it’s all on you. There’s a lot of sitting in cafés by yourself trying to work out if the thing you’ve just written is hilarious to other people as well as you. Or sitting on trains at midnight looking out of the window wistfully drinking gin-in-a-can knowing all your mates are on a night out.

'But the obvious flip side to this is that when stand-up goes well you can gorge on all the glory yourself as you are the one who’s done all the work. The high of a great set is better than anything. Apart from gin-in-a-can, obvs.’

Given that Taylor dubs herself as a ‘professional show-off’, you have to wonder (and then ask) what is the the most 'professionally show-offy' thing she’s ever done? ‘I once hosted the Butcher Shop of the Year Awards. There’s nothing like performing to the personification of the phrase a “sausage fest” to hammer home how you’ve hit the big time.’